It’s a matter of course that every election, Republican politicians will complain about the “liberal media” being unfair to them. In fact, it’s so ingrained in the conservative zeitgeist that the media is “liberal” and therefore “bad” that years and years ago they were inspired to launch their own “conservative” alternatives. And all was well and good, until it wasn’t. Because conservative spin which is factually wrong doesn’t help conservatives. In the long run, it hurts them.

Those chickens have been coming home to roost for quite a while now, creating an increasingly embarrassing fail parade for the Republican Party. The conservative echo chamber gave rise to the Tea Party, it gave us climate change denialism and birtherism and Sarah Palin and Clint Eastwood yelling at an empty chair representing the right’s fantasy Obama. It gave us “unskewed polls” and Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich going on national TV to explain how Mitt Romney was going to win in 2012, guaranteed. And it gave us the embarrassment that is Donald Trump.

And it’s this last bit which has finally woken some folks on the right up. Not just the National Review, which recently ran a column about how the conservative echo chamber hurts conservatives (though even this piece seems to have missed the point a bit), but right-wing radio hosts like Charlie Sykes of Wisconsin, who was interviewed by Business Insider’s Oliver Darcy and made this very astute observation:

You know, sometimes facts do have a liberal bias. And when you demonize all of your fact-checkers, your “gatekeepers,” you’ve basically normalized the tin-foil hat conspiracy theories and other nonsense. These are your new facts, and you are as married to them as your audience is because you have no other way of rebutting it. You’ve painted yourself into a corner.

In short, you keep people in the dark and feed them bullshit for so long, all you end up with is a bumper crop of mushrooms.

9 responses to “When Your RW Media Bubble Backfires”

And this new ‘movement’ is happening in down-ballot races all over Tennessee and here in Knox County it is so apparent, One GOP nut case candidate is taking advantage of the theory that right-wing leaning media MUST paint him in a glowing light of being “unique”. It is MARTIN DANIEL, who adores and worships Trump and tried to emulate the crazy, far out behavior of The Donald. And even main-stream media refuses to even mention OUR VERY SANE, Democratic, intelligent, determined young, BRANDI PRICE, an attorney who works for children and families. She began her campaign before three other GOP candidates, men wanted to beat him,. And the reason they lost is because Daniel has developed his own clueless followers as he embarrasses our State by the following actions that make National news: He has invited ISIS members to set up recruiting places on UT Knoxville campuses. He engineered the total destruction of the Diversity & Inclusion DEPARTMENT at our flagship University. He mocked parts of his daughter’s 4th grade social studies public school textbook because it contained the words and information about “social justice”. And then last week, during a radio debate with his opponent, STEVE HALL who formerly held this seat and was funded by Haslam, he almost struck HALL,, calling him a liar!
And NO WHERE in any right wing weekly papers catering to the GOP is there even a mention that WE do have a legitimate, candidate who WILL WORK for the citizens in House District 18. If you want to help replace one Trump clone here in Trump crazy Tennessee, contact Brandi at: voteBrandiPrice@gmail.com. She does not have piles of lobby money or a huge team helping her. BUT she does have integrity and a desire to serve! !

SB, thanks for this very cogent explanation of how it all went wrong for the conservative side of the aisle. Indirect thanks to Sykes, as well, for having the guts to speak out. The only possible problem with your entry here is that it is TOO logically laid out. “They” don’t like that….the only big word they know is, “obfuscate.”

Charlie Sykes appears occasionally on MSNBC and calls out the bullshit. Saner voices on the right are waking up to what has been wrought in their name. What’s been done will be very difficult to undo after so many years. The culmination in the choice of Trump as the nominee of the GOP, the man who speaks the “truths” of the far right openly, in plain language, rather than in (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) codes is no more than what could have been expected from years of operation of the right-wing propaganda machine.

Nice blog you have here. I was reading a bit about Tennessee and came across it. I’m a northerner who always wanted to live in the country a bit but I’m also a liberal…..nice to know id have a few buddies down there lol… I despise the GOP, I don’t know why the southerners “generally” vote GOP… My father fought in Vietnam, I blame the GOP – is it prejudice? LOL ! Ciao ciao